Professor of Psychology
Professional Development Course in School Education, Graduate School of Education
Kumamoto University
2-40-1 Kurokami, Chuo-ku, Kumamoto City, 860-8555
Japan
Email: yatuzuka@gpo.kumamoto-u.ac.jp
Web: https://sites.google.com/view/yatuzuka,
https://researchmap.jp/yatsuzuka.ichiro

Ichiro was born in Hiroshima, Japan in 1969. After entering the Faculty of Letters at Kyoto University to study sociology in 1988, he went on to graduate school, also at Kyoto University, where he majored in Group Dynamics and received his Ph.D. His advisor was Professor Toshio Sugiman. In 1995, while still in graduate school, he encountered the Great Hanshin Earthquake Japan, which led him to engage in disaster relief volunteer activities. During that time, he also conducted psychological research on the group formation and dissemination of volunteers. After working at Nara University for several years, he was transferred to Kumamoto University in 2001. His arrival at the Faculty of Education led him to study educational problems in Japan, issues such as the group dynamics of bullying, bullying as a social reality, and appropriate ways to understand and respond to bullying.  Now he teaches group psychology and narrative communication, and theory of social constructionism to students interested in teaching, and is involved in theoretical and practical research on bullying issues. He is actively involved in local government bullying investigations and anti-bullying awareness education activities. He is known as a psychologist of social constructionism and a researcher in qualitative psychology and discourse analysis. He has been also involved in the project of translating Professor Kenneth Gergen’s works into Japanese.